Tag Archives: film review

Phantom Thread is a new movie that will go down in history as the last one ever to feature pretending by D-Day Lewis, one of the world’s most ferocious actors. Some say this guy can’t even take a piss without hitting “Track 2” on his iPod shuffle–a recording of Marty Scorcese screaming “I’m the director, gimme satisfaction; act really good once I yell, ‘Action!'”. This motherfucker doesn’t keep magazines next to his toilets, he keeps scripts and those cardboard DVD sleeves that people are so quick to throw out despite containing valuable information about the film within. The acting world will never be the same now that D-Day is hanging up his earrings fashioned after those acting masks where one is laughing and the other is nauseous.

Phantom Thread is a fairly boring story of a dress maker who is a total shithead. Because he makes good money making dresses for European princesses, nobody seems to mind that he’s an asshole. He meets this waitress who wouldn’t know Fendi from Wendy’s and tricks her into becoming his girlfriend/muse/worker/chef/seamstress/friend/fucker/assistant/model. All she gets in return is a season’s pass to hanging out with him and the odd dress that makes the rich women of London go, “SHIT!”.

I can’t talk about the rest too much because it would spoil the movie like post-raisin barf on fresh Flemish lace. There’s actually a cute clue hidden in that sentence that would make director Paul Thomas Anderson’s camera finger twitch the desire to flick my cheek for potentially ruining a paying customer’s experience.

The score (music that plays in the background to distract the audience from actors’ audible winking) was done by Radiohead’s resident bad boy provocateur, Jonny Greenwood. The trio of Greenwood, Anderson, and Lewis have combined for a scant ten lifetime smiles, and could probably lull Jimmy Fallon himself into suicide. Word has it, their favourite on-set joke was to brainstorm a new screwball comedy about blood disease starring John Larroquette.

There’s actually quite a lot of eating in this movie but its very limited to breakfast foods including at least three toast scenes. There are no explosions or cameos unless the woman who plays the Belgian princess was in Veronica Mars or something–I didn’t check. There is not ethnic diversity in this movie except there was an interview with the guy who plays Black Panther during pre-show entertainment with Tanner Zipchen, who has really grown into his role as film fluffer.

This movie is perfect for someone looking to distract their parents from grandma being in the hospital and I would give it seven D-Day Lewis stares in the mirror at himself until he remembers his real name and identity after a hard day of acting out of 10 Oscar voters who are scared to admit that they didn’t realize the woman who plays his assistant in the movie was also his sister.

Like this:

From the pages of Marvel’s comics comes another movie with the beautiful and funny Thor. This time it’s a family affair featuring Thor’s dad, brother, and brand new sister who none of us even knew before this movie came out.

The word around the taverns is that this Thor movie is the funniest one, and that’s true. Every character in this movie is a goofball at heart and they are all so witty that Ryan Stiles himself would be jealous.

It’s all your favourite comic book things come to life on the silver screen including aliens, monsters, spaceships, guns, swords, knives, tight clothes and mind boggling special effects that must’ve been made by a lot of computers.

This movie was made with as many computers as there were punches in the movie that were made to look real by using computers. No one got hurt though in real life or in the movie. Hulk punched Thor from a thousand feet in the air and all Thor did was fall asleep so what can kill Thor? You’d have to explode him from the inside but I don’t know I watched cartoons I didn’t read comics. If this movie taught me anything about fighting it’s that you should do one of those sideways barrel rolls after you get punched and it makes the punch look bad but you can get up right after.

I wore a coat and a sweater to the movie and I wasn’t even that hot even though I left my coat on the whole time because I didn’t want to sit on it. The 3D glasses hurt the bridge of my nose but you could chalk that up to me being as clear eyed as Thor, meaning my face isn’t accustomed to things resting on it. This morning there was a bit of redness where the glasses sat, which is kind of a problem because I’ve been having skin problems already. I’ve been red lately and despite moisturizing I’m still fairly flaky. I’m confident this will pass but after living blemish free for a good long time, I’m concerned that maybe my hormones or something have changed and I’m entering a new age like when Thor gets a haircut in the movie. I ate a medium popcorn bought in-house and brought my own PC Blue Menu sparkling water that I threw out (but didn’t recycle, so sorry) after the show.

Almost every character spoke English but not everyone was from North America. In fact, there were only a couple that I could count, which made it feel like I was watching the World Cup of soccer where we’re the minorities for once. There was a tiny bit of eating in the movie but no major meals. They used the Led Zeppelin song twice probably because it was so expensive to buy. Everyone knew their lines perfectly as far as I could tell.

I give this movie 1 Taika out of 3 Waititis and recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to be a comedian but doesn’t want to do any of the work.

Like this:

Logan is better known as Wolverine, the Canadian mad man with claws who spends his new movie, Logan, as a guy named James even though his friends call him Logan and strangers call him Wolverine if they’ve heard of him.

Logan is fucked up big time in this movie, forcing Hugh Jackman to act with a limp the whole time for probably the first time in his career. In this chapter of the book of this character that’s shaped like a paw, Logan is still alive in the future year of 2029 with his friend and fake dad Professor X. In this he meets a little girl who is exactly like him yet he is still surprised to find out she’s his daughter, probably because the only school he ever went to only taught him how to beat up weirdos and not freak out any time someone looks at him funny.

This movie is a lot like Bad News Bears because it’s about a little daughter helping out a drunk middle age daddy who doesn’t seem to even want a daughter. The little girl in this one looks less like Tatum O’Neal and more like a young Lukas Haas, actor and charter member of Hollywood’s original Pussy Posse.

This movie is also like Terminator 2 in a way because there’s tons of stabbing and a guy protecting a kid, and also kind of like Little Miss Sunshine because there are quite a few road trip sequences and drugs. For you Spielberg fans there’s even a touch of Hook in that there’s some powerful kids hanging out in a clubhouse which Logan goes to in a tuxedo like Robin Williams in Hook.

There were so many stabbings in this movie that I’m surprised it’s not rated S. But seriously, when a movie stars at least 3 people with claws there’d better be wounds, and boy were the movie ambulances you never see burning rubber over the few days or whatever that this thing took place.

This future in this movie isn’t half bad except for this army of guys who all have robot arms doing whatever it is they feel like all day long. And every car is made by GM/Chrysler in the future. That sucks because my family has been about Fords since the ’90 Taurus wagon.

There’s one good eating scene at a stranger’s dinner table and one good bathroom scene, which are good numbers for a major motion picture.

This ain’t the kind of X-Men movie with blue chicks and karate aliens and shit, it’s more raw and that makes sense because Wolverine like his meat raw and his beer cold. Oh Canada indeed.

I’d give this movie 23 “stab wounds” out of 28 “ADR grunts” and would recommend it to anyone who is looking to prank someone religious.

Like this:

A good movie sequel is like a hot roast coming out of the oven after you just ate the same roast. The new roast has great potential because no matter what it is fresher than the first roast, but then maybe you’re not as hungry because you already had one roast. This is the kind of meal that I experienced when I saw John Wick part 2 now in theatres.

John Wick: He’s a man, and he’s two movies. Everything you loved about him and it is back because John Wick is back in John Wick 2 where Wick is back on the job as the world’s most unkillable killer.

He hates his damn job but whenever you kill someone people get pissed so John has to keep doing his job or he’ll die from getting killed by another guy who wants revenge even though he’s the hardest to kill in the world. The bad guys want to kill him so bad but they and us know that John Wick is the best killer in town. The only way to kill a guy like this is for everyone in the world to try to get him and that’s sort of what happens in this movie. It’s a bit weird because in the world of John Wick most people are killers who use gold coins instead of money to get a nice New York hot dog or to pay another guy from doing something for them.

Wick shoots his way through tons of guys and only two girls at the speed of a tornado and looks as cool as he is sad as he travels from New York City to Rome to New York City again for more action.

The fact that this is an urban movie is a real treat for people living in the country because they already think everyone in the city wants to kill them and this movie does a good job at keeping them scared of that.

If the first Wick was about his doggy, this one was more about John Wick. Before the movie my real brother told me that his dog grew up and became his guard dog in this movie so I expected to see the dog eat someone but sorry, all it does is hang out, no big deal.

John Wick doesn’t eat anything in this movie but one of the bad guys has a great scene where he nibbles a very tasty looking artisanal french fry that brought back memories of the bald guy from Matrix eating a steak in front of the agent who was a tough guy to kill, like John Wick. That’s a pretty interesting connection for movie fans who are more like sleuths than regular watchers like me.

The soundtrack has nothing for me to add to my iPod so here’s a rap I wrote that would’ve been ultra cool during the closing credits, with a rude beat I found on the Internet that you can use to sing along:

Light the wick, I’m talking John Wick
Forrest Gump? Nah, what are you, sick?He’ll shoot your skull to make sure that you dieHe’s got a suit on his back and a gun to his eyeHe aims straight and never runs out of gunsIt’s Keanu baby, hunk sandwich on action bun
One gold coin might buy you a drink
John Wick 2 a Titanic that won’t sink

Chorus:

John Wick, get up get down, everybody danceChapter 2 homie just give it a chanceAction packed no need to skip itTake your sweetie to the movies, get a ticket ask guy to rip it

I’d give this movie 11 “loaded guns” out of 13 “but I thought we don’t support guns”. I’d recommend it to anyone who needs to hide somewhere for two hours.

There’s only one way to cure the space fever that’s infected movie watchers worldwide this holiday season, and that’s by seeing a film that takes place on God’s great ground. This doctor would recommend a few syringes full of The Hateful Eight, a new horse-drawn bleeder from the Stud of Blood himself, Q. Tarantino.

If you prefer your earth muck-brown or grass-green then maybe should keep your melon on the moon because this baby is teeming with the white stuff and I’m not talkin’ whipped cream. It’s a snow-covered epic that screams, “I’m a cowboy movie”, although I felt I was watching award-winning actors playing dress up with clothes and hats by award-winning costume designers influenced by an old Pendleton catalog they found at the famous Rose Bowl Flea Market. Let’s just say that the leads look more “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” than “These Are Horsey Gentlemen”, know what I mean? I’m all for being stylish but when the guy steering the carriage looks more more fashionable than me–a hip, youngish northern urbanite with a keen eye for flair–I can’t help but get taken out of frozen Hell and into Elle.

It’s cool though, this is a movie, not the New York Times. There’s plenty of dirt, blankets, fur, chunky stews and wood-paneled shacks to evoke feelings of a time before non-stick pans.

The story is about a bunch of assholes who happen upon each other on this shitty mountain in Wyoming. There’s one woman whom everyone else revolves around like a nerd at a movie museum revolving around a life-sized BB-8 droid who’s revolving around itself while revolving around a made-up universe with planets named after nothing but human imagination. To tell you anything more than that would be to betray Me-Everyone else who doesn’t jam hard like me confidentiality, so let’s just say that they don’t spend their time in the shack exchangin’ boot sizes and fried bread recipes.

With Tarantino telling everyone what to do and say you get a lot of adult themes, liquor use, swearing and shooting. There’s more than enough snow and a couple mentions of J.C.’s b-day to designate it a Christmas movie, with enough western themes to trick your dad into seeing it.

I’d give The Hateful Eight a “yee haw I didn’t mind paying for this” out of 10 and hope that Tarantino’s next movie has a few cell phones in it for Christ’s sake.

Hobbit-Heads worldwide got an extra special Christmas orange this year in the form of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the third and final Hobbit film. This new Hobbit movie is the perfect dessert after a satisfying meal of two other Hobbit movies. If you’re confused it’s because there were three Rings movies that featured more way more Hobbits than The Hobbit and to top that off, the Lord of the Rings of the Rings movies isn’t even a Hobbit.

This baby girl picked up right where we left off with the dragon burning the water city and the dwarves and the Hobbit waiting around. Then a dad kills the dragon and you think “oh the adventure is over, the gold is won”, but rather than worry where their next turnip is going to come from, beings from all over the country want some gold for themselves or maybe as a present for their sweeties so they walk to the mountain for some war.

There are supposed to be five armies fighting for the gold — the pretty elves, the funny dwarves, the boring humans, the outrageous orcs and I guess the Hobbit who manages to survive even though he’s from a town full of pussies.

The orcs were extra scary but still managed to be killed by the hobos and children from the burned town, little dwarves wearing very heavy hats and a Hobbit who doesn’t even wear boots. This was making me mad but then I realized that the reason the orcs don’t fight well is because they don’t train! They sit around and accuse each other of being gay and wait until their big boss says “run”. Meanwhile, the little guys who kill them drape themselves in magic clothes and train all day, no joking around until after supper, that kind of thing. And where’s the motivation? If the orcs win a battle they still have to go back to the dungeon and sleep in their armour, it’s not like they have pajamas. It’s like a goth on Christmas–even if they want to get into their jammies they can’t or else they won’t be goth anymore despite how pure the flannel is. You think there are post-battle treats in the dungeons? Yeah right. Maybe a clean rat will wander in and they can split it but even still, no one would share because they feel too much pressure to be rude.

We know that everything works out fine because this movie happens before the Rings movies that we’ve all already seen. That’s cool though, it’s about the journey not the destination and if there’s one little boy who knows that all too well it’s Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, the title Hobbit of the film.

I saw The Hobbit for free because Uncle Dave was running the IMAX projector and snuck me in. I got to press “play” in the control booth and that kind of power made me feel like Gandalf, my favourite wizard. I ate no snacks but got to leave my jacket in the booth so that I felt very free and comfortable in my seat, not worrying about any opportunists looking to pinch the jackets of Hobbit fans whose eyes were glued to the screen full of creatures. I’d give this movie a “I might as well finish the trilogy” out of 10 and would recommend it to someone who wants to annoy a friend who hates modern filmmaking.

*Don’t read this if you haven’t seen it yet and think that it will be good*

Intro

Godzilla the lizard was first invented by Japanese men or women to represent nuclear weapons, which had previously fucked up chunks of the country during the old fashioned wars of old. The use of nukes isn’t as common today so it wouldn’t make sense for a new Godzilla to be a “bomb dude”. At first I thought that maybe this version of God is all about sports and how we cheer for monsters who need drugs to keep moving. Remember the drug in RoboCop 2 called “nuke”? In this movie, monsters eat radiation to stay alive–coincidence? I don’t know. Then I thought, maybe today’s God represents politicians whom we trust even though they destroy our cities by being rich or whatever. Then I thought that maybe Godzilla is simply the lord God, a guy we trust but can’t control. I looked up some quotes about Earth’s God and they fit so well with the film’s God that I felt like Robert Langdon solving one of Jesus’ trickiest puzzles.

Godzilla

“God(zilla) is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

The start of Godzilla is all about no one knowing there’s a Godzilla. Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad and Seinfeld plays a dad who knows there’s something wrong in the Japanese ocean, but doesn’t know it’s Godzilla or these other two monsters who aren’t in the previews. If you’re looking for an actor who can convincingly bawl uncontrollably, this is the guy you call, and the Cranberry got in about three good ones before he unfortunately leaves the movie about half an hour in. Luckily, before he leaves Ken Watanabe is introduced as a guy who knows there’s a Godzilla but didn’t know about the other monsters. No one wants to believe either men, but believe me, in this movie there is a Godzilla.

“The blame is his who chooses: God(zilla) is blameless.”
– Plato

So anyway, Godzilla and a couple of large horny bugs start destroying Earth looking for radiation, and the only people who can stop them are the U.S.A. army, who in this movie is made up of about 500 troops, two tanks, six fighter jets and fifteen or so air craft carriers. The rest of the world’s armies don’t make an appearance even though the biggest thing to happen in history happens, but hey, there ain’t no lizard squattin’ on their toilets, eh?

Cranston’s son, played by that snotty fucker from Kickass, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is an army bomb expert who cares more about showing off he knows about bombs than protecting his son and wife, whom he ditches quite early on. Most of the movie is Johnson running around various army camps looking for his wife and guys saying “nope, haven’t seen her”. Too bad for him that his wife and son live in San Francisco, which the monsters decide to destroy in the classic movie tradition of destroying San Francisco (Star Trek 2, Pacific Rim, X-Men 3, The Towering Inferno, Big Trouble In Little China and Mrs. Doubtfire). I guess every director in Hollywood is from San Diego.

“Sir, my concern is not whether God(zilla) is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God(zilla)’s side, for God(zilla) is always right.”– Abraham Lincoln

I know it’s stupid to point out stupid things in a movie about a monster bigger than the CN Tower, but some of this shit was too hard to ignore mostly because God doesn’t even fight until the very end. For example, Cranston’s bomb son travels from Iraq to San Francisco to Japan to Hawaii to Las Vegas to San Francisco in a span of like, 2 days and still manages to find time to save an Asian boy, jump off a bridge, jump out of a plane, blow up a monster nest and drive a boat before meeting up with the son we all forgot he had and the mother who ditched the son early on to find the dad. The movie could’ve been called The Parent Trap 3 and we wouldn’t have cared.

Godzilla looked pretty great onscreen, at least when you could see him through clouds and dirt, but his foes looked like the creatures of our children’s video games. All of their roars were on trend.

Even though Godzilla isn’t supposed to be the monster version of a bomb, most of this movie is about bombs. In the end, the bomb expert couldn’t get this case off a bomb so they instead rely on Godzilla to eat the other monsters and then hopefully fuck off. I guess maybe he is supposed to represent a bomb.

Usually with these reviews I like the movie but put on a fake attitude about how dumb it was. This one was hard because I actually thought it was dumb. Everything you think would be good in this movie isn’t really in it including the top billed actors and Godzilla.

I saw Godzilla in 3D but I’d give this movie 1D and a “tighten the next one up, boys”. Before it I ate a burger and fries and didn’t have to get up once. The guy seated in front of me maintained maximum recline the whole film leading my long legs to feel slightly uncomfortable. I didn’t check my watch once but that was probably because I was wearing the one without the light.

Gravity is a brand new movie set mostly in outer space where a handful of astronauts have some trouble at work. Sandra Bullock plays the main floater who has never been to space before but knows how to fix the big droid better than veteran astronaut played by real deal woman fucker, George Clooney. There’s one other guy whose face you do not see, but whose voice would be best described as “Mexican?”.

There isn’t much to say about the story except that humans are the only species we get to hang out with and Earth is the only planet we get laugh at. If I wanted to see some humans on earth I’d take a look in the mirror because I have a tattoo of Buzz Aldrin licking a globe.

The main draw of this future Wikipedia favourite is the visually stunning depiction of outer space, painstakingly created in a computer program that doesn’t come with the computer you bought. No wait, who cares? Outer space is the easiest thing to draw next to the sun, which also makes several appearances.

If “gravity” is the science that keeps our poo flowin’ the right way, then the film Gravity is the film that stops us from pooing for 90 minutes because we don’t want to get up and poo during the film. As a joke, I threw a Mars bar at the screen when the credits started rolling. I give this film two thumbs on the buttons that make space ships fly and hope that it inspires someone to make a space movie with more sports in it.

Fast & Furious 6 is the latest in a series of films about cars and the men and women who use them for everything but transportation.

Former wrestler and current mainstay at MTV- based award shows, Dwayne “A Rock” Johnson plays some sort of law enforcement official named Hobbs who’s having a whale of a time tracking down “Shaw”, a really smart hunk who is really good at crime and making cars that are better than regular ones. While investigating the bad guy, Hobbs realizes that one of Shaw’s teammates is Vin Diesel’s wife (Michelle Rodriguez) who had died in part 3 or something. He convinces Vin Diesel to ditch his new girlfriend and their lavish oceanside Spanish villa to get his old wife back and save the world too. But he can’t do it alone because there are too many favourites in the series to simply ignore. He convinces Paul Walker to ditch his wife, oceanside Spanish villa and newborn baby boy and join the mission, then puts in phone calls to the rest of the gang: Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, an Asian guy with great hair and an Israeli supermodel, who are all living great lives thanks to all the money they made killing the last bad guy. But hey, when your friend asks you to help him find his dead wife who happens to be in cahoots with the world’s most dangerous man, you drop everything fast and furiously.

What follows is two hours of fights that leave combatants un-cut, shootouts that leave our heroes un-shot, and car chases that result in thousands of civilian casualties. All the while Vin Diesel works very hard to refresh the memory of Rodriguez, who contracts a mean case of amnesia when she almost died that one time.

I’d say this film was well worth the money I paid to sit in front of it because it was full of the kind of shit that make movies fun to go see, which in this case included a tank chase, a plane chase, computer screens with maps and bar graphs on them and a post-credit sequence starring British-born actor Jason Statham. There were also some great quotes that reminded me of the dialogue I’d make-up in my head when I’d play with actions figures as a child. Here are some:

Paul Walker: Letty is dead Dom.Vin Diesel: I need to know for sure.Paul Walker: Then I’m going with you.

Vin Diesel: [Hands over the microchip to Hobbs] So this is worth billions.Rock: [Smiles] Name your price, Dom.

[Long pause]

Vin Diesel: [Referring to his old address in Los Angeles, which is a piece of shit in East L.A.] 1327.

Rock: If you want to catch a wolf, you need a wolf.

Go see Fast & Furious 6 if you don’t care about what your smart friends think of you, or if you want to impress a girl who is new to North America. I’d give this movie a multi-star high five out of ten.